Hi kids. Today’s art lesson comes in the form of England’s most popular and well known graffiti artist. How popular is he? Well, two men were actually convicted in a UK court for defacing one of his works. That’s right. He tagged a building, they covered it up, and they went to jail!

Banksy is no street thug. He is a serious artist that happens to have an addiction to spray painting his art in public places. His art features striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment or pro-freedom.
Read the rest of this entry »

There is a film called Oil, Smoke & Mirrors which documents what the producers claim to be an impending peak in global oil production. It has been viewed 750,000 times on Google Video alone.

A number of experts, economists, the UK’s former Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, and Germany’s former Science and Technology Minister, Andreas Von Buelow, share their opinions regarding what sounds like an impending oil crash; and then the producers tie this theory into one of complete global conspiracy to control the last remnants of oil capacity.

To me, the film is woven together in such as way that the topic seems to change from the concept of the world’s increasing oil usage and decreasing supply to more of a Roswell type malicious governmental cover-up.
Read the rest of this entry »

Can’t we all just get along? Apparantly not, and the folks over at Maps of War have documented the many different eras of domination of the Middle East as proof.

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Europeans…the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure about you, but I had some preconceived notions about American political parties tendencies to go to war. Interestingly, they turned out to be completely wrong.

Here is a historical recounting of all US wars, how many lives were lost in each, and the responsible ruling party at the time.

This is not to say that the US necessarily initiated the conflicts, but these parties were in power at the time the decision was made to go to war, so it still demonstrates willingness to fight.
Read the rest of this entry »

After years of war, US military leaders came to believe that the Japanese military would literally fight to the last man. Although Axis forces were already defeated in Europe and Japan was losing on their front, many US officials believed that bringing an absolute end to the war with Japan was going to be a long and bloody ordeal.

When presented with the new Atomic option they reasoned that the loss of 2-300,000 people in Japanese cities would be measurably fewer lives lost than the continuation of the War. (We must remember that this was prior to the advent of smart weaponry, and that entire cities would be fire-bombed prior to invasion and hand to hand combat in trenches. War was hell.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Just imagine getting up for work one day and putting on your wetsuit like “second skin”, made from a space age nanoparticle technology which was custom fit to your body by literally pouring it on and letting it dry. If you’re a police officer or soldier, this may be exactly how you start your day if the folks at Armor Holdings have anything to say about it.

That’s because their new liquid armor is a thin, light, material which is knife and bullet resistant. The material, made of a shear thickening fluid that harden when a sudden force is applied, is light, flexible and solidifies on impact. While this material may not supplant Kevlar, it certainly adds a valuable layer of protection for our service men and women. In fact, it’s already being used by Olympic Skiers.
Read the rest of this entry »